The Pollsters’ Guide to Reporting on Polls – NationalJournal.com

Attention, America: The 2016 horse race is on. Most everyone who’s floated the idea of running for president already has formally declared.

And as the number of official candidates continues to grow, the more reporters will turn to pollsters and ask: Who’s winning? With nearly 20 candidates potentially in the game, that answer is impossible to decipher.

“Everybody wants clarity,” says Peter Brown, associate director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. “Polls often don’t provide clarity.”

“I think most commonly, reporters ask if I think the current poll numbers will hold,” J. Ann Selzer, who conducts polls for Bloomberg and other media outlets, writes in an email. “How in the world could anyone know? The campaigns are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to change the poll numbers, so I would expect change, but in what direction?”

via The Pollsters’ Guide to Reporting on Polls – NationalJournal.com.